What would you do different

Ok. Good to know you are with us.

First thing first. When recording a part of history that will not repeat again, any picture irrespective of technique is a valuable documentation for the person of concern. So don't allow anything to stop you discover or enjoy taking picture for any reason.

Yes you are in a right track to reshoot and reassess your abilities but any picture can be improve to a degree, according to the taste of photographer, so my best advice is to get into post processing mastering the faster you can.

Few things I did that meet my taste (Not necessary anyone else - This disclimeri is needed as after spending time for OP and show a different way of presentation, good or bad, certain members jump in and say they LOVE it as it was before. Well LOVE is blind and that is a different issue but not a help for an OP who wants to see things change in one way or another). OK done with the fine prints, here is what I did:

- Corrected the exposure specially for the shadows.
- Boosted the vibrance.
- Blurred selectively some of those pixels you mentioned around the lip and nose.
- Blurred background a tad selectively.
- Cloned the catch light of right eye, reproduced it on the left eye with lesser opacity.
- Cropped it more toward Portrait mode and wish I could do more but not possible as is.
- Add a tad of sharpness.

- Other things you can do is to selectively burn areas you don't like to be seen now to get more attention to the main subject or simply creating a tone for say hair etc. Well - optional.

Anyway these are things I could do.
Hope you like it too and hope others will show actually a different side of image without admitting to incompetence in a way to ignore effort of every other person willing to help.

samsen wrote in post #15122998
Ok. Good to know you are with us.

First thing first. When recording a part of history that will not repeat again, any picture irrespective of technique is a valuable documentation for the person of concern. So don't allow anything to stop you discover or enjoy taking picture for any reason.

Yes you are in a right track to reshoot and reassess your abilities but any picture can be improve to a degree, according to the taste of photographer, so my best advice is to get into post processing mastering the faster you can.

Few things I did that meet my taste (Not necessary anyone else - This disclimeri is needed as after spending time for OP and show a different way of presentation, good or bad, certain members jump in and say they LOVE it as it was before. Well LOVE is blind and that is a different issue but not a help for an OP who wants to see things change in one way or another). OK done with the fine prints, here is what I did:

- Corrected the exposure specially for the shadows.
- Boosted the vibrance.
- Blurred selectively some of those pixels you mentioned around the lip and nose.
- Blurred background a tad selectively.
- Cloned the catch light of right eye, reproduced it on the left eye with lesser opacity.
- Cropped it more toward Portrait mode and wish I could do more but not possible as is.
- Add a tad of sharpness.

- Other things you can do is to selectively burn areas you don't like to be seen now to get more attention to the main subject or simply creating a tone for say hair etc. Well - optional.

Anyway these are things I could do.
Hope you like it too and hope others will show actually a different side of image without admitting to incompetence in a way to ignore effort of every other person willing to help.

wow that looks amazing. did you use photoshop? im not the best with that yet.

Yes, PS.
Glad you liked the post processing.
And listen to my advice and never do anything but PS. That is the universal language almost all photographers talk with. The earlier you get into it and master it, to your needs, the better you are.

samsen wrote in post #15123102
Yes, PS.
Glad you liked the post processing.
And listen to my advice and never do anything but PS. That is the universal language almost all photographers talk with. The earlier you get into it and master it, to your needs, the better you are.

whats your advice on learning ps. i have been reading books and watching videos.

it will take me a while, especially since i am going to school full time not related anything to photography

jjaenagle wrote in post #15123233
whats your advice on learning ps. i have been reading books and watching videos.

it will take me a while, especially since i am going to school full time not related anything to photography

OP, just to jump in here on this last bit. When I learned PS in a previous life (my focus was initially on graphic design, then photography) what I did that I recommend with any similar software, was to get a book, and only read that book while I was next to my computer. Every example of how to do something that was shown in the book, I reproduced in PS as I was reading it.

It takes a long time because you're not just reading, but you get the experience of doing that which you are learning and I believe that this helps to better retain the information in the long run. I did it in about a month while working full time, so I guess that can be comparable to being in school, maybe?

Insofar as resources, I am sure everyone has their favorites. I really like Colin Smith's website, PhotoshopCafe. There are also tons of tutorials on the web that you can google, which you also mentioned you have been doing. I recommend doing the book/hands on example strategy first, and then doing the tutorials. You mentioned that you already have been reading books... Try this and see if it helps to learn faster, as it did for me.

The book I used was part of the "How to do everything with [fill in the blank]" series, and it was very good for rudimentary basics of all the tools in PS. It's not an advanced book, and it won't make you an expert. But it will show you all the tools, as well as how and when to use them. That being said, this was in the Photoshop 7 days when Photoshop CS was just coming out, and the latest version is Photoshop CS6, so it's been a while.

I mention this in case there is no new book for CS6 from the series I mentioned. Perhaps others with more recent experience can chime in if that's he case

My only word of advice is, whichever book you get, please stay away from anything with the word 'Dummies' or 'Idiots' in it . Seriously, those books are garbage. I know you won't believe me because this is the internet, but one time I ordered a book from Amazon that was on Flash (web animation and programming) and instead I received Flash for Dummies. I didn't bother exchanging it, not sure why really. I tried reading through it the same way but unfortunately it had zero depth to anything and I might as well have read the help section instead of one of those books, I would have learned more! (I did get another book, though, but I still have Flash for Dummies on my bookshelf!)

Good luck!